Glasgow University Theatre Archive

           When they were googling for The Real McCoy,  someone told me they came across stuff by me in the Glasgow University Theatre Archive. I'd never even heard of it. Here is the link.
          The first two pieces about A Sense of Freedom are not mine, but the other ones are. Oddly enough, I don't have copies of some of these scripts, so it was nice to find out that they were somewhere.

Review of Are You Boys Cyclists?

          Are You Boys Cyclists? got it's first review since it was uploaded to Kindle. It's from someone I knew at university. In fact, he thinks he was in Alma Mater. Anyway, he sent me an email saying he didn't have to exaggerate. But he normally only reads computer manuals, so you can make what you like of it. I don't know what he's got to laugh about anyway!

4.0 out of 5 stars This book is a Celtic American Psycho, October 20, 2011

By 

Alec McClochendichter - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Are You Boys Cyclists? (Kindle Edition)

I couldn't put it down, as they say. Actually I had to put it down, but only to eat. I continued reading on the bus to work, laughing aloud. I hope nobody was reading the graphic parts over my shoulder.

A hugely enjoyable book by someone who knows how to write. Honest and depraved. Who would have thought a postmodern novel could be so much fun!

Promoting Ebooks?

           All ten of my ebooks are now selling for 86p!

           I think I read somewhere that there are 700,000 books on Kindle, and it seems if you sell one copy, you end up about 250,000 in the bestseller lists, so I suppose most of the ebooks there aren't selling at all.

          I was encouraged to set up this blog to get some kind of internet presence and it is actually starting to get hits, about two or three a day. I think they're coming from Facebook. I went onto Facebook about a year ago to help keep in contact with my younger relatives, but I started promoting the books on there. I've only got about thirty five friends, so that's not a lot of promoting!

           The only real work I've been doing on promotion has been advertising the books on relevant discussion threads that you find beneath where the books appear on their Kindle page, but that just seems to piss people off!

             Anyway,  the books haven't been selling at all. The Real McCoy hasn't sold a single copy, which is quite funny because it's the best one there in my opinion.

             Even if they don't sell another copy I'm very pleased to have them on Kindle. Nice to have them parked somewhere. I'm trying to put my writing behind me for a while so I can get on with practising raising inner heat, the foundation for the Six Yogas of Naropa. 

             The books are now all selling for 86p!!

Review of Are You Boys Cyclists?

         This review of  Are You Boys Cyclists? was pointed out to me today. Well, here is it:

         Review of: "Are you boys cyclists?" by John Mckenzie, Serpent's Tail, 1997

This is the sort of book you buy at the newsagents in a bus station or airport to pass the time on a long journey, and the next thing you know you're so enveloped in its developing scenarios that you don't want to reach you're destination before you've finished the last page.

"Are you boys cyclists?" has nothing to do with bikes. It has a minimalist storyline, yet grips the reader from start to finish. Based loosely around the progress of an amateur boxer who has some talent but who lacks both total commitment and a killer instinct, this book repeatedly flashes to scenes of extended gymnastic sex and includes tales of various other activities of a social/antisocial (depending on your inclinations) nature.

John Mckenzie, the author, once worked in Heriot-Watt University Library, which is one reason I am reviewing this book. Another reason is that it is set in Edinburgh in the mid to late seventies and therefore fits in to the leisure time section of the Internet Resources Newsletter. The publishers (Serpents Tail) have a web site where you can find their catalogue, and thankyou to Lisa Clarke for sending me a copy of this book.

Buy it well before you get on the bus!
RM


Are You Boys Cyclists?  is of course on kindle! Yours for 86p. You can get a free download of Kindle of PC off the site if you don't own a device.

TheBlissBook

          TheBlissBook is about bliss, meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, writing and working as a full time librarian in a bog standard Edinburgh comprehensive school. All the incidents and characters in the book are completely fictional however.

          TheBlissBook is written in the same style as Are You Boys Cyclists?  and The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other two! Someone I knew at the school where I used to work bought it as soon as it was uploaded and here's his review:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, 5 Oct 2011

By 

Ewan Walker - See all my reviews

This review is from: TheBlissBook (Kindle Edition)

I really enjoyed reading this book nd never stopped laughing the whole way through. Perhaps it's because I could relate to the situation, or perhaps it was the clever mix of humour, teaching and semi-autobiography that made this novel so great. I'd love to read more work by this author!

          Whereas Are You Boys Cyclists? was written in about six months, TheBlissBook took me two and a half years. This was partly because by then I was spending an awful lot of my spare time in meditation and partly because I kept getting really annoyed when I was working on it.

            The first agent I sent it to was Pat Kavanagh, the doyen of literary agents sadly now deceased, and she wrote back with this wonderful response : "It reads to me like autobiography infused with fantastical wish fulfillment and written while high on adrenalin? Speed? Dope?"

             The second agent I sent it to phoned me up the next day at my work and tried to get the book published at the Frankfort and London book fairs, and just about everywhere else, but drew a blank.

              I'm very pleased to be able to put this book on Kindle. It's selling for 86p, a real steal!

Are You Boys Cyclists?

Monday 10th October, 2011
          I  managed to get the last two books up onto Kindle last weekend. It's very simple to upload stuff onto Kindle, but not if you're an idiot like me. Unfortunately, I managed to misspell my name. It's under John McLKenzie, and I can't change that just now because for some unknown reason (probably more stupidity on my part!) I cannot get into my account just now. When I have regained access ...

         Are You Boys Cyclists? was published originally by Serpent's Tail in 1997. It was the fastest piece of writing I've ever done. I started writing it in August and finished at the start of February. I was expecting this to be the last book I'd write and thought when I couldn't get it published that I'd give up writing and train to be a school teacher. I don't think it would have been published if I hadn't been advised by a writer friend of mine to send the typescript to the home address of the publisher, Peter Ayrton. Anyway, it did get published and I got £1,000 advance, some of which I spent on a holiday to Nepal and India. This led to The Buddha And The Big Bad Wolf, also on Kindle.

          It's a true account of my time amateur boxing and a true, if somewhat jaundiced, account of my writing career up to that point. I'm sure I got it published because of the heavy sexual content, a lot of which was completely fictional though I found it difficult to get folk to believe that at the time!!